Brain Poutine

vendredi 15 novembre 2013

Right, way overdue is a battle report for the scenario book Haven. This scenario is really nice, having two cops answer a domestic disturbance call in the early days of the apocalypse. It doesn't need any miniatures, indeed I played without any, just a paper map. In it, you go from room to room, reading a description as you go, which will vary depending on prior events. In this it was very reminiscent of the old solo rpg books, while being a lot less limiting then "if you go left go to paragraph 337..." I heartily recommend the Haven scenario book, as it's really narrative based and loads of fun. I just wish there were more scripted adventures like this. what would be awesome would be a kind of internet joint effort, where based on a common floor plan, people would share their scenarios.

The adventure itself went really well. The two police made their way inside,searched around before finding a woman hiding. Rolling on the Halt! table, she was calmed and one officer proceeded with the search while the other took the woman's deposition. The patrolling cop found the Z, rolled into melee on the "zed or no zed" table and quickly knocked it down. Since this was Day One, I ruled that the cops treated it like any other dangerous suspect. So he was cuffed while knocked down(cops won activation). Meanwhile, girlfriend sneaks up on the cops and starts yelling at them. Police try to calm the woman, zombie gets back up. Police win melee,knocks it down. Zombie gets up. Police knocked it down. After a while of this I got bored and ruled that the Z just ripped its own arm off to get at those tasty brains. Police wins melee, knocks it down.. It gets back up. They shoot, knock it down, it gets back up. This goes on for 21 turns, I kidd you not. I could just picture the officers shooting it in the legs, the arms then body shots as they come to the realization that the thing they faced wasn't, couldn't be human. I eventually rolled a 1 but I figured there was no way the bureaucracy could let so many shots slide.

So my heroes were suspended pending hearing, while the whole world kept sliding down the drain. In the face of growing chaos however, the two partners were soon recalled to help quelling the "Riot in ZombieTown"...

mardi 12 novembre 2013

Here he is, Tanuki! In Japanese folklore, Tanuki had the power the enlarge their testicles at will. Seriously Google, quit messing with my mind! Tanuki balls be this way, ye brave. Warning! Once seen, never unseen.

But Seriously, this figurine was a joy to paint. It's full of character, with a nice pose and a very expressive grin. I'm very happy with this one, I think I may add a bit of foliage on the base, but otherwise it's quite nice as it is.

However, I realized that I had never posted pics of my other supers, shame! So here goes...

mercredi 30 octobre 2013

Right, so it's been a while. Just wanted to post a few pics of the new figs I recently bought. I really fell back into Pulp City, and I can't wait to dump ridiculous sums of money for their upcoming kickstarter. BTW, I recently found Pulp Citizen, a blog that gives a lot of updates and features well painted minis to boot!

As for me, I've mostly been getting through my warhammer fantasy battle huge shelf of unpainted minis. But recently, I bought some minis from a guy on a local forum and I wanted to get cracking ASAP.

So here's ShadowMask, ready to pounce on that poor riot cop from offensive miniatures. I started to work on Shadowmask before I got this idea. When it was time for mounting, I tought he just looked too puny just jumping from a wall. Now he just looks so killer! I'm not totally happy with the conversion though, as I didn't want to damage my painting, so I didn't bend his head to look down and I had to compromise the final pose so the mini would'nt be too unbalanced.

I'm very happy with the skin as it was the first time I ever painted Asian skin. Ii doesn't stand out in the pictures, but I went overboard on the highlighting because I wanted to give him a bulbous, unnatural looking musculature and I think it came out really well.

I must say that in general Pulp City miniatures are a pleasure to paint. Details are crisp, poses are very dynamic and often come with nice accessories for basing, like statues and such. When they don't, the pose is so inspiring that you just have to go the extra mile. The fluff is also excellent, constantly inspiring my painting and giving me ideas for basing.

I'm also working on Tanuki , the other mini present in the box. Seeing my track record on blogging, I wont make any promise :). But I'm aiming for 1 mini a week until all my supers and minions are painted.

vendredi 19 avril 2013

It's a sad fact of life that I've had too live with CACA syndrome (compulsive army collecting and amassing) . recently, I traded away a beastmen army, only to acquire almost as soon a sizable wood elf one. But enough of that, let's get trading.

On the chopping block is the root of all evil, my very small Vampire Counts collection. Now this was my first army, and the painted models are really my first tries at the hobby.

Not shown here are about 20 painted old school skeletons and about as much unassembled. Offers accepted through bartertown, username raspoutine.

mardi 5 mars 2013

I added the flames because the scenic base I had was too small for the provided base. If you embiggen the pic, you can see I also added falling spent shell casings. Alas, my kid dropped the mini and it exploded. I just have to start over , maybe using more greenstuff? My kid is in love with Guerrilla and can't keep away from it.

vendredi 14 décembre 2012

Ever since THW released their new mixture of their incredibly fun zombie rules All things zombie, I've been gnawing at the reins to revive an old campaign I'd started around the scenario book Haven. I'd completed three games, all a huge fun, but I was sidetracked by the 'Ooooh, Shiny!" part of my brain by other fun projects, mainly Warhammer Fantasy Battle. I still have a lot to do before I start a new game. Look for the ATZ bat reps of my old games in the coming days.

The "Ooooh, shiny!" part of my brain is also in firm command of my wallet. This being Christmas, I decided to go ahead and buy the complete set of Police and Rioters from Offensive Miniatures. Since I haven't seen a review anywhere else, I thought it would be good to showcase these very fine minis from an under-exploited theme. And since I'm on fire, I bought the MUCK papercraft set from Stoelzel's. I was blown away by his customer service and I intend fully to review this set later. All in all, this should keep me blogging until 2013!

mercredi 6 juin 2012

Last year, , my wife and I decided to build a castlefor our son's birthday. We wanted something that could be modular, easily assembled and easily stored. So, inspired by the excellent papercraft company worldworks TLX, we got to work.

What is hidden under there?

The concept was simple : put the base tile format upsized to 2'X2' , in a sandwich between 2 cardboard squares. This would allow us to build a wall in almost any configuration. We also built smaller tiles, crenelation, and corner connectors.

Ta-da!

Now, a year later, this build is still used by our son. It's not perfect, most of the connectors broke or folded, but the tiles are still just as solid as day 1. Unassembled, everything fits under the bed!

I'm sorry I don't have a detailed project log for this, but feel free to ask any questions...